Amazon woes

There is a small but vocal contingent on the Amazon boards right now insisting that authors must not start threads to promote their books, and that to do so is spamming. I say "small" because my own experience and observations indicates that starting such threads can have a really strong positive effect on sales, which suggests that most people over there don't mind a single thread per book. However, there are a lot of threads popping up about this issue, and some authors who advertise on the Amazon threads are reporting that their low-rated reviews are all being rated up as "helpful" (thus bringing them to the top), which may or may not be related. This is just something to be aware of if you post over there. Based on my (admittedly limited) experience over there, these things go in cycles, and the wave of anti-author sentiment will probably subside soon.